Washit Concept Recycles Shower Water For Your Laundry

Hippies have a saying, “save water, shower together.” That suggestive line might work when you’re at B&B with your sweetie, but it’s not so practical when traveling, living with roommates, or in the dorm. However, it’s the idea of doing more thing at once that inspired a new concept in showers.

Washit is a concept that combines your shower cabinet with your clothes washing machine. By combining both technologies into the same unit, the design saves water and time without the inconvenience of another body in the bathtub.

Image via Aktas, Ilhan, Onalan, Soylemez/Behance

The average person’s shower lasts about 15 minutes and sends about 4 gallons of water down the drain. Washing a load of clothing uses about 10 gallons of water, and is generally a chore that most people would rather not do. The Washit concept reuses the grey water produced while you’re showering to wash your clothes, which could be a real boost for people living in water-restricted areas.

But wait, isn’t it gross to wash your clothes in the slightly dirty water that you’ve used to clean your body? It certainly would be, but the team of four Turkish design students who created the Washit already thought of that. “Washit uses a closed-water plumbing system that collects the greywater from the shower outlet and stores it in a tank ready for washing laundry,” explains Gizmag. “Before the greywater reaches your clothes it passes through a series of three filters – carbon, organic, and chemical – to ensure your laundry doesn’t emerge dirtier than when it went in to the machine. These filters can be removed for cleaning or replacement at any time.”

It’s important to note that the Washit isn’t meant to wash entire loads of laundry at once. Instead, it’s capable of holding one or two outfits worth of clothes, so that every time you get into the shower cabinet, you’re recycling the water to for a small amount of laundry. The designers also claim the clothes will be dry enough to wear by the time you get out, but we’re not exactly sure how that’s achieved.

Beth Buczynski is a freelancer writer and editor currently living in the Rocky Mountain West. Her articles appear on Care2, Ecosalon and Inhabitat, just to name a few. So far, Beth has lived in or near three major U.S. mountain ranges, and is passionate about protecting the important ecosystems they represent. Follow Beth on Twitter as @ecosphericblog